Chapter 119: Blue eyed girl
He himself felt a bit stupid about how he was explaining it to her, but since he couldn’t come out and say he was actually trying to learn more about his legendary items, he had no other choice.
The woman’s confusion deepened further, though she didn’t press the matter beyond a small, curious frown.
"I see," she said slowly, clearly still not entirely certain what he meant, but professional enough not to question a patron’s request too closely. "That would fall under our general history section, then. Third floor, east wing."
"Thank you," Leon said, offering a small nod before making his way toward the wide staircase visible near the center of the building.
He climbed the stairs quickly, following the signs toward the east wing once he reached the third floor. The shelves here stretched out in long, organized rows, each one labeled according to broad historical categories.
He moved through them carefully, scanning titles as he went, searching for anything that might reference figures like Arthur, Medusa, or Hermes specifically.
Instead, what he found, section after section, were countless biographies and detailed records chronicling the lives and achievements of various legendary-rank players from across the Western Continent’s history.
He pulled one down at random, flipping it open briefly.
The book detailed the rise of some player from the past, describing his achievements clearing high-rank dungeons and eventually founding one of the continent’s earliest recognized guilds.
Leon closed it again, unimpressed, and returned it to its shelf.
He continued searching, moving deeper into the section, but the pattern held consistently.
Every book he found focused entirely on players, guilds, and historical events tied directly to the system as it currently existed.
Nothing referenced any older mythology, any gods or ancient figures predating the system itself.
His frustration mounted the longer he searched, weaving between shelf after shelf without finding anything resembling what he actually needed.
A library this large, serving as the primary knowledge repository for an entire continent’s capital city, should have contained something, anything, touching on the kind of ancient history he was looking for.
He eventually came across a thicker volume near the end of one row, its cover simply titled The Father of the System, with the name Sysmus Grande printed beneath it.
He recognized the name immediately.
Every player, regardless of which continent they hailed from, learned about Sysmus Grande at some point during their early academy training, the man widely credited with creating the very system that governed players, dungeons, and skills across the entire world.
He picked the book up briefly, turning it over in his hands, before setting it back down with a small, frustrated exhale.
Whatever this book contained, it almost certainly covered material he already knew well enough from his own academy education. It wasn’t what he’d come here searching for.
He turned to leave the section entirely, ready to ask the librarian downstairs whether the library held any specialized archives beyond what was currently on display.
But something made him pause halfway through his first step, his eyes drifting back toward the book he’d just set down.
He stood there for a moment, staring at the title again. The Father of the System.
His eyes narrowed slightly as a thought crossed his mind. ’Perhaps I’ll just read this for now...’
It wasn’t as though the book offered him anything new.
Sysmus Grande’s history had been drilled into every academy student for as long as Leon could remember, his achievements, his eventual disappearance, the sweeping, world-altering system he’d left behind for every player across the globe to inherit.
There was, by any reasonable measure, nothing left in a book like this that Leon didn’t already know.
Still, with nothing else in the entire section offering him any real lead, and his frustration mounting with every passing minute spent searching fruitlessly through the shelves, he decided it couldn’t hurt to at least skim through it properly.
If nothing else, it would give him a few quiet minutes to sit down and think through his next move, now that his original plan for finding answers here had turned up mostly empty.
He picked the book back up, tucking it under his arm, and made his way toward one of the nearby reading tables, settling into a chair with a tired sigh.
He flipped it open carefully, the pages creaking slightly from age, and turned to the first proper Chapter, ignoring the brief foreword that summarized the book’s contents in a handful of dry, academic sentences.
The opening pages covered exactly what he’d expected. Sysmus Grande’s early life, and his childhood in a small town, that no longer existed today.
It was material he’d heard recited a dozen times over during his years at the academy, drilled into him and every other student through repetition until the details had long since blurred together into vague, background knowledge rather than anything he actively thought about.
Still, he kept reading, his eyes moving steadily down the page even as his mind wandered elsewhere, drifting back toward Excalibur, toward Medusa, toward the still-unanswered question of why none of the actual legendary figures he cared about seemed to exist anywhere within this library’s extensive collection.
It didn’t make sense to him. A library this large, serving as the central knowledge repository for an entire continent’s capital, should have held something, some scrap of historical record touching on gods and legendary bearers predating the modern system entirely.
He was midway through the second page, his attention only half focused on the actual words in front of him, when a soft, muttered voice drifted past from somewhere just behind his shoulder.
"Hmph. Why would anyone want to read about Sysmus Grande," the voice said, quiet but sharp, carrying an unmistakable edge of distaste beneath its softness. "He’s a fraud... for creating that evil system."
The words caught his attention instantly, cutting cleanly through the fog of his own wandering thoughts.
His ears, sharper now than they’d ever been before, picked up every word despite how low the voice had spoken.
Without thinking, he turned around sharply in his chair, twisting to look directly toward the source of the voice.
A girl stood a few steps behind him, positioned between two tall shelves, apparently having been passing through that particular row when her gaze happened to land on the open book resting in his hands.
The moment their eyes met, she froze completely, her entire body going rigid, a small, startled gasp slipping past her lips before she could stop it.
She clearly hadn’t expected him to hear her at all, let alone turn around and meet her gaze so directly.
The surprise written plainly across her face made that much obvious immediately. Whatever comment she’d just made, she’d clearly assumed it quiet enough to remain private.
Under any normal circumstances, she would have been right. A comment spoken that softly, barely above a whisper, wouldn’t have carried far enough for an ordinary person several steps away to hear clearly at all, let alone make out the exact words.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything at all.
The girl remained frozen in place, her wide eyes locked onto his, clearly still processing the fact that she’d somehow been caught.
Leon, for his part, found himself momentarily thrown off balance by something entirely unrelated to the awkwardness of the situation itself.
Her eyes.
They were a bright, vivid blue, strikingly clear, the kind of color that reminded him, almost involuntarily, of a cloudless afternoon sky stretched wide and endless overhead.
He hadn’t expected the sheer intensity of that color to catch him so completely off guard, but there was something about it, something sharp and vivid, that held his attention for a beat longer than he probably should have allowed.
Her hair fell in long, smooth waves past her shoulders, a warm shade of brown that caught the soft, filtered light spilling down from the library’s high windows, framing a face that carried delicate, refined features, currently locked in an expression somewhere between embarrassment and quiet panic.
Leon studied her for a moment longer, an odd, nagging sense of familiarity tugging faintly at the back of his mind, though he couldn’t immediately place why.
Something about the shape of her eyes, maybe, or the particular shade of blue, felt as though it belonged to a memory he couldn’t quite reach, hovering just out of grasp.
The girl, meanwhile, seemed just as caught off guard by the prolonged eye contact as he was.
Her cheeks colored slightly, a faint flush spreading across her fair skin as the silence between them stretched on, growing more uncomfortable with every passing second neither of them chose to break it.
She opened her mouth slightly, as though about to say something, perhaps an attempt at some kind of explanation or apology, only to close it again just as quickly, apparently unable to settle on the right words fast enough.
Leon, watching the whole exchange play out, found the moment stretching a beat longer than strictly necessary, both of them simply staring at each other, neither willing to be the first to look away, though clearly for very different reasons.
Finally, he cleared his throat, the small sound cutting cleanly through the tension hanging between them, breaking the silence at last.